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HOW TO SCAM DEL TACO
By Fayner | March 18, 2008
Stars of YouTube video ‘How to Scam Del Taco’ arrested in Rialto
…on the web
Pausing between mouthfuls, the man calling himself Mr. Califero proudly displayed his haul for the camera.
Seven tacos, a large order of fries, two sodas and two quesadillas with extra chicken would have cost $15. But as he titled his Feb. 19 homemade video, this was about “How to Scam Del Taco” and get the food for free.
“See what happens?” said the 6-foot-5, 500-pound narrator, whose real name is Robert Echeverria. “Guess that’s how you do it.”
As outlined in a video posted on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube, Echeverria netted the feast from a Rialto Del Taco by calling the manager to say he was a local CEO whose lunch order had been botched and he didn’t have a receipt.
Five minutes later, he and two friends are seen in a parked SUV laughing, eating and mugging for the camera.
Rialto police didn’t find it so funny.
Within days of getting a tip about the video early this month, detectives identified the 32-year-old Echeverria as a gang member and obtained felony second-degree commercial burglary warrants for the arrests of him and his two 18-year-old friends.
If convicted, the maximum prison sentence could be seven years.
“This seems to be the new wave of crimes being committed: posted on YouTube for the world to see,” said Rialto police Lt. Joe Cirilo. “They’re victimizing someone here and making a joke out of it.”
On Monday, the video had been viewed 430 times.
While the teens, Ian Anthony Roman and Brian Fawcett, posted $25,000 bail, Echeverria remains jailed in lieu of $125,000 bail pending his scheduled court appearance today. All three have been charged with carrying out the scam to benefit a street gang.
On Monday, Echeverria’s girlfriend said the charges and bail are excessive. She suggested the police were upset by another “Mr. Califero” video in which the aspiring rapper curses Rialto police and questions the circumstances under which one of the department’s officers was killed last year.
“They’re trying to make an example out of him,” said Juanita Gracia. “I think they’re trying to stick anything on him that they can.”
Gracia said Echeverria hasn’t been in a gang since his early 20s in Los Angeles, but Rialto police have a 2007 gang identification card in which they outline his “self-admitted” status. Either way, Cirilo said the man’s other video had nothing to do with prosecution for the Del Taco video.
“We saw it and obviously realized a crime was being committed and the person was bragging about it,” he said.
The prosecutor who reviewed the case said the video contained every element needed to support the commercial burglary charges, including Fawcett entering the Del Taco to pick up the food.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for 17 years and I’ve never seen a self-contained confession video by a defendant,” said San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Sully Moore. “It laid out all the legal elements of the crime that we needed.”
Del Taco spokeswoman Barbara Caruso thanked the authorities for taking the video seriously.
Echeverria is seen on the video asking Roman and Fawcett which fast-food place they want to call, then reciting the Del Taco’s location and phone number. He gives his name as Robert Kennedy and says that in an earlier order he was given the wrong drinks, and sour cream that he didn’t want.
“This has never happened with you guys so I understand it might have been an honest mistake,” Echeverria tells the manager.
After having his order repeated, Echeverria says he will send in one of his “sons” to pick up the food. Roman, who was arrested March 8 as he worked at a Fontana Stater Bros, said he filmed the entire seven-minute video, once turning the camera on himself.
“We were fooling around,” he said by phone Monday. “We never intended it to be anything criminal. It was ridiculously blown out of proportion.”
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